What Is A Reader?

Although Barthes, Foucault and Landow all explore in great depth the role of the author and what the author stands for, they do not explicitly focus on the role of the reader in a text. However, by actually exploring the author and the author`s position, they in turn also put forth suggestions as to what the reader is and what the reader`s role is.

In order to consider the role of reading one must first consider what the reader actually is. Towards the end of Barthes` chapter, he states that the reader is `the space on which all the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without being lost`1 and that the `text`s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination`(Image, Music, Text, page 148). This suggests that the reader is indeed one of the most important elements of a text and the reader themselves are the `destination`. To further examine what the reader is, it could be possible to consider what the author is and from there draw conclusions about the reader who is inextricably linked to the author. Considering that the author should not be thought of or linked to a text, and is `never more than the instance writing` (Image, Music, Text, page 145), it is therefore the reader who should interpret a text without having been influenced by the author or author`s name. Barthes suggests this through stating that `the text is henceforth made and read in such a way that at all its levels the author is absent` (Image, Music, Text, page 145). He goes on to say that the `reader is without history, biography, psychology; he is simply that someone who holds together in a single field all the traces by which the written text is constituted`, which suggests that the reader, this someone, is, or at least should be, to an extent, objective in his or her approach to reading and interpreting a text, and this objectiveness is achieved by putting aside the author and their possible intention. However, a sense of subjectiveness in the reader`s interpretation is also suggested through the idea that `a text is not a line of words releasing a single ``theological`` meaning` (Image, Music, Text, page 146), implying that the interpretation of a text should, and will, differ from reader to reader and this is only possible if the author is not thought about during the interpretation process.

Furthermore, the role of the reader is presented as more important than the role of author. For example, although he does not directly refer to this shift in importance, Foucault says that `the mark of the writer is reduced to nothing more than the singularity of his absence`2 By reducing the authority of the writer in a text, Foucault implies that the reader should be left to form an impression of a text free from any authorial influence. Instead, Landow directly states that the role of the reader is the `active, independent, autonomous construction of meaning`3. This suggests that Landow`s opinion is, quite similarly to Foucault`s, that the role of the reader is to give a text meaning. If this idea is combined with Barthes` idea that `it is language which speaks, not the author` (Image, Music, Text, page 143), then it could be suggested that the role of the reader is to interpret a text based on dominantly the language used as opposed to interpreting it based on the author or his/her name. This also clearly shows that although the theorists do not directly make the reader a focal point of their theory, they in turn do this by lowering the importance of the author who is discussed more thoroughly.

In many ways, it could be assumed that the role of the reader does not in fact relate to the role of the writer and that a relationship between the two does not, or at least should not, exist. Foucault`s `author function` suggests that the author`s function is only to write the text and the author should not be part of the meaning that is conveyed to the reader, suggesting that a link between the two should not exist. It is quite possible that the interpretation and meaning should be dependent on the reader`s relationship with the language, as opposed to the author`s relationship with the language, implying that the roles of the two differ greatly. In Landow`s theory, he indicates that a connection between the two does exist by stating that `the functions of reader and writer become more deeply entwined with each other than ever before` (Reconfiguring the Author, page 125). However, Landow also discusses `more than one way to kill an author` (Reconfiguring the Author, page 128), which in turn suggests that although a relationship may exist, it is preferable for it not to when one is finding a meaning in a text.

Through consideration of the various theories proposed by Barthes, Foucault and Landow respectively, it indeed appears that the role of the reader is not entirely linked to that of the author, as the reader should detach the text from the writer. However, through this non-relationship, a relationship appears to exist concerning how a text can only be given meaning by the reader once the author is forgotten about. Barthe`s suggests that `the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author` (Image, Music, Text, page 148), suggesting that the two may be mutually exclusive and that the author must be `sacrificed` in order to gain a more thorough and real understanding of a text.